Marco Vasquez took little more than a two-year break from four decades of municipal policing -- to serve as the chief investigator with the Colorado Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division from December 2010 until March -- but it was enough time to make him yearn for the uniform and the camaraderie of the stationhouse again.

The 58-year-old Denver Police Department veteran and former Sheridan police chief will be getting back his street beat sensibilities when he takes over as chief of police in Erie, starting today. He succeeds John Hall, who announced his retirement late last year after serving eight years as the town's top cop.

"I'm a strong advocate of community policing,"said Vasquez, who is married to a Denver police sergeant and has two children, one of whom is a Denver police detective. "I enjoy interacting and working with people."

Erie Town Administrator A.J. Krieger, who worked with Vasquez when Krieger was city manager in Sheridan, said his old colleague showed his adeptness at managing others, whether it was training, motivating or deploying a police force.

"He's at his heart and at his core a cop," Krieger said. "He missed the community and day-to-day interaction that you have when you are part of a municipal police department."

New station top priority

Vasquez will have his hands full upon settling into the job, which will pay him $105,000 a year. First and foremost, the new chief will find himself and his 21-officer force still working out of a cramped 2,400-square-foot space inside Erie Town Hall. The station is so tiny that detectives have been known to hang up blood-soaked items in the women's locker room to dry because there is no space for an evidence room.

In November, Erie voters barely turned down a ballot measure that would have raised taxes to pay for a $6.2 million, 18,000-square-foot police headquarters and courts building on County Line Road. Vasquez said there is no doubt Erie needs a new station and that the town could do a better job of communicating to residents the value a modern, top-of-the-line police facility would provide in terms of community safety and wellbeing.

"We need to tell people we're going to be good stewards and ambassadors of that money," he said. "We need to tell people that they won't be disappointed in granting us that trust."

That message will largely be driven by the town's fast-paced growth, Vasquez said. At more than 20,000 residents, Erie has a number of large housing projects working their way through the town's approvals process that could add thousands more people to the population over the next decade or so.

"We're investing for the future," Vasquez said. "We want to build a large enough facility that it will sustain well into the future."

Aside from a larger physical space, he said, more people in Erie means more cops will be needed on the street. He said the town's current ratio of 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents is lower than national standard.

"We're going to be watching the demands and workload very closely and as we see an increase in calls for service, I will be a strong advocate for adding officers to the force," he said.

Krieger said the town has budgeted for an additional police officer position in this year's budget but has had to make tough choices over how to prioritize its needs when it comes to spending money.

"We know we have needs, but we don't want to get ahead of our resources," he said.

1999 drug raid controversy

Vasquez comes to Erie with a wealth of law enforcement experience, starting right out of high school in 1972 as a Denver police cadet. He worked as a patrol officer, a narcotics detective, and a sergeant with a crack cocaine task force. He was deputy chief of administration with Denver when he left the force in 2008 to take over as Sheridan's police chief.

For the past two and a half years with the Colorado Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division, Vasquez set up field offices around the state and hired investigators for the agency. He said he enjoyed the challenge of helping Colorado "see its way through" the largely untested waters of legal weed.

Vasquez's tenure in law enforcement hasn't been entirely without controversy, however. In 1999, a Denver SWAT team raided a home and shot and killed Ismael Mena after he allegedly pointed a gun at them. It was later determined that the raid, which was drug-related, was carried out at the wrong address.

At the time, Vasquez was commander of the district where the raid took place. While he wasn't there the day officers mistakenly burst through the door to Mena's house, he was in charge of the officer who had requested the erroneous search warrant.

"It was a real tragedy," Vasquez said. "It was a kind of watershed moment for the Denver Police Department and certainly for me in my career."

The department ended up looking into allegations from a technician with the force, who claimed that Vasquez pressured her to alter reports in the aftermath of the Mena raid. Vasquez said he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Krieger was aware of Vasquez's connection to the botched raid but said it caused him no reservations during the candidate vetting process. It was just one moment in an otherwise distinguished 40-year career, he said.

"Because he is so committed to law enforcement and public safety, Marc endeavored to learn everything he could from that incident," Krieger said. "You don't hire someone based on a single thing, you hire someone because of the skill set and experience they bring. The man I know is a conscientious, moral man committed to public safety."

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